Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Supported by

Toys ‘R’ Us Gets Nostalgic for Christmas

By Stuart Elliott October 28, 2011 3:20 pmOctober 28, 2011 3:20 pm

Each Christmas shopping season, toymakers and retailers like to bring back vintage playthings, the better to appeal to parents – and grandparents – whose nostalgia for their own childhoods informs their buying decisions. For Christmas 2011, Toys “R” Us is bringing back vintage advertising.

Two commercials from the 1980s will return to television as part of the Toys “R” Us plans for the coming holiday season. Both commercials feature the brand character Geoffrey the Giraffe and one of them includes the familiar jingle written by the advertising executive Linda Kaplan Thaler that begins, “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.”

The 2011 campaign is not entirely nostalgic. Much of it is rooted in contemporary products and selling tactics; for instance, on Sunday, Toys “R” Us will insert into Sunday newspapers the Christmas catalog that it calls The Great Big Toys “R” Us Book.
The return of the commercials speaks to “the generations of kids who grew up with the Toys ‘R’ Us brand,” said Greg Ahearn, United States chief marketing officer for Toys “R” Us.

The spots are in “the exact state” they were in when they ran in the ’80s, he added, except for a line being superimposed on screen at the end of each commercial that declares Toys “R” Us is “still the world’s greatest toy store.”

Some toys in the nostalgic spots are no longer being made or sold at Toys “R” Us.

“There’s old toys in old toy commercials,” Mr. Ahearn said dryly, adding that the return of the spots was “more about the emotion” than about selling specific products.

Although executives at Toys “R” Us “don’t comment on the economy,” Mr. Ahearn said, they are “optimistic” about results for Christmas 2011.

“Christmas always comes; Christmas is always there,” he added.

And although “we don’t say toys are recession-proof,” Mr. Ahearn said, “one of the last things parents will spend less on is gifts and toys for children.”

On the contemporary front, plans include, in addition to the catalogs, commercials that promote the current top-selling toys as well as toys that are being sold exclusively at Toys “R” Us.

Also on the modern side of the ledger is the Toys “R” Us presence in social media on Facebook and YouTube.